Tata’s values, Reliance’s speed: Mittal’s mantra for Bharti@50

Between 2016 and 2019, Sunil Bharti Mittal did something few founders are ever asked to do–he raised $18 billion in 34 months, simply to keep his company standing. “It looked as though the company could collapse,” he recalls of the years after Reliance Jio’s entry upended Indian telecom. “During those 34 months, I raised $18 billion simply to ensure our survival,” he says in an interview with Financial Express.

Airtel survived. Now, as Bharti turns 50, the group that began as a small bicycle-components unit in Ludhiana in 1976 has its sights on AI data centres, sovereign cloud and compute.